"Literal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the same people returned with Mansong's answer, a literal translation of which I give as follows. "Mansong says he will protect you; that a road is open for you every where, as far as his hand (power) extends. If you wish to go to the East, no man shall harm you from Sego till you pass Tombuctoo. If you wish to go to the ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... greatest cause which, in ancient or in modern times, has been pleaded at the bar of the moral judgment of mankind. (Cheers.) I know that to some this will sound as the language of exaggerated feeling; but I can only say that I have expressed myself in language which I believe conveys the literal truth. (Hear, hear.) ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... have as foolish notions as any one else. Some think that they win Heaven by believing something with their minds about our Lord's atonement. Some think they go to Heaven by soaring up through the air. Some of them, taking in its literal meaning the glorious imagery of the Apocalypse, picture to themselves streets of beaten gold and walls of flashing emerald and jasper, and the wearing of crowns and the singing of Psalms over and over again through all ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... against the government; he ordered the messenger to be arrested and gave the signal for attack on the Aventine, while at the same time he caused proclamation to be made in the streets that the government would give to whosoever should bring the head of Gracchus or of Flaccus its literal weight in gold, and that they would guarantee complete indemnity to every one who should leave the Aventine before the beginning of the conflict. The ranks on the Aventine speedily thinned; the valiant nobility in union with the Cretans and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... me to a third reason why, under the stress of war, English Christianity is hardly in revival, namely, Bible difficulties. The Prayer Book comes down to us from men who were held by a belief in the literal truth of the whole Bible. In so far as it has been an effective manual for ordinary people, it has been on the strength of an absolute dogma in their minds as to the "Word of God." That dogma has in a vague and somewhat ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... without parables. Or, as Augustine says (De Qq. Evang., qu. xvii), this means, "not that He spoke nothing literally, but that He scarcely ever spoke without introducing a parable, although He also spoke some things in the literal ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... reads into them the feelings of a New York or Boston woman. The following is an instance. A girl sings to a warrior (I give only Miss Fletcher's translation, omitting the Indian words): "War; when you returned; die; you caused me; go when you did; God; I appealed; standing," This literal version our author explains and translates freely, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... priestess, and apparently alone. A closer view of her person brought me no disenchantment. Perfect beauty, like the sublime, produces an impression of the infinite, and I only speak the literal truth when I say that she appeared infinitely beautiful to me. Her golden hair, rippling over the delicate ear and gathered into a knot behind, her large violet eyes and blooming white skin, her Grecian profile and stately yet flowing form, might have become an Aphrodite ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... rebuked. I'm literal. I'm instructed. I have brought you down here to talk the situation over with me. I can get men in plenty to advise me, but I want to know what you think about a number of things. Moreover, I want you to tell me ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... a curious fact that the kindred of the buffaloes and bisons differ exceedingly in the measure of their domesticability. Thus, the ordinary buffalo of Asia, though a dull brute, is very subjugable, even in the literal sense, for he makes a tolerable beast for the plough and bears the yoke with due patience. His African kinsman, on the other hand, is perhaps the most unconquerable of all the large wild animals. The late Sir ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... of air had been tinctured with Doctor Haggage's brandy, was handed down among the generations of collegians, like the tradition of their common parent. In the earlier stages of her existence, she was handed down in a literal and prosaic sense; it being almost a part of the entrance footing of every new collegian to nurse the child who had been born ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... numberless subtle links and windings. The authors of the Apocryphal books (of "Daniel" and of "Enoch," for instance), men highly exalted, in order to aid their cause, committed, without a shadow of scruple, an act which we should term a fraud. The literal truth has little value to the Oriental; he sees everything through the medium of his ideas, his ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... an instant to propose that every one should read poetry. The man whose imagination has never taken fire from literature of any kind, whose brain is literal and dislikes any embroidery upon the surface of plain fact, who is deaf to music, unresponsive to ideas, and limited in his emotions—such a man in my opinion is unfortunate, although he is often an excellent citizen, lives happily, makes a good husband, and may save the state. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... taken as a more or less poetical account under the metaphor of motion. These "leanings" are literal in the sense that one note does imply another as its natural complement and satisfaction and we seek to reach or make it. The striving is an intrinsic element, not a by-product for ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... Our mother determined to accord him an interview in her own apartment. She longed to converse with him at her ease—to hear his tale from his own lips—to sympathize with and console him. Oh! who could blame her if in so doing she departed from the strict and literal meaning of that vow which had bound her to consider her relations as dead to her? But the fault—if fault it were—was so venial, that to justify it is to invest it with an importance which it would not have possessed save for the frightful results to which it led. You have already heard ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... one of those autobiographical novels that were popular throughout the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century. It was published in 1970, and one must understand Wander Jahre rather in a spiritual and intellectual than in a literal sense. It is indeed an allusive title, carrying the world back to the Wilhelm Meister of Goethe, a century and a ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... the whole time, in spite of continual efforts on the part of Marston to make me keep silence. I am not the man calmly to let pass black insinuations against the character of a friend. No, I stood up for him. I am glad to think how I stood up for him, not only metaphorically, but in the most literal sense of the term; for I found myself continually getting up, and Marston as often pulling me ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... expedient to which they resorted was that of selecting the rules of law common to Rome and to the different Italian communities in which the immigrants were born. In other words, they set themselves to form a system answering to the primitive and literal meaning of Jus Gentium, that is, Law common to all Nations. Jus Gentium was, in fact, the sum of the common ingredients in the customs of the old Italian tribes, for they were all the nations whom the Romans had the means of observing, and who sent successive swarms of immigrants to Roman soil. ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... was looked upon as an instigation to servile insurrection. The "Appeal" was proscribed, and a price put upon the head of the author. Garrison deprecated the sanguinary character of the book. For he himself was the very reverse of Walker. Garrison was a full believer in the literal doctrine of non-resistance as enunciated by Jesus. He abhorred all war, and physical collisions of every description, as wicked and inhuman. He sang ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... undiscovered until a comparatively recent time. Its eighteenth-century gravestones are consequently for the most part rustic and primitive. The skull and other bones here depicted, decked with wheat-ears and other vegetation, probably have some literal reference to the agricultural pursuits of the deceased, although of course they may be only poetical allusions ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... far-sighted plans. Even when most of them had accepted his leadership and were obeying his orders, a handful of desperate men refused to go. They took refuge on the hill of the Acropolis, and acting upon the literal meaning of the oracle toiled with axe and hammer, building up wooden barriers before the gates ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... suspended, having got leave of absence from Mr. Taylor, who commanded the Bell Rock tender, and had in his possession one of the Protection Medals. Unfortunately, however, for Dall, the Regulating Officer thought proper to disregard these documents, as, according to the strict and literal interpretation of the Admiralty regulations, a seaman does not stand protected unless he is actually on board of his ship, or in a boat belonging to her, or has the Admiralty protection in his possession. This order of the Board, however, cannot be rigidly followed in practice; and therefore, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... attorney had proved more of a Job's comforter in the literal sense of the term, than he had intended; in fact he had overdone it—the picture was too highly coloured to appear natural, and at once threw back poor Job upon a full view of all his troubles, which Mr Smith perceiving, mildly resumed, "I'm not surprised, my good fellow, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... conceived an affection for a young nobleman called Walther, and had promised to marry him at an early date. Here, then, was a complication indeed, and Hans was sorely puzzled to know how to act, while the unfortunate Minna was equally perplexed, and for many weeks she endured literal torment, her heart being racked by a constant storm of emotions. She was deeply attached to Walther, and she felt that she would never be able to forgive herself if she broke her promise to him and failed to bring ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... of Mr. Lewisham's thoughts, and he was mechanically trying to keep the book open in three places at once, at the text, the notes, and the literal translation, while he turned up the vocabulary for ludibrium, when his attention, wandering dangerously near the top of the page, fell over the edge and escaped with incredible swiftness ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... in Europe and America, concede that the Scriptures have both a literal and a moral meaning. Which of the two is the more important to gain,—the literal or the moral sense of the word devil,—in order to cast out this devil? Evil is a quality, ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... they adopted was a piece of insanity in the literal sense of the word, a confused medley of ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... genuine truth can also be drawn in full from the literal sense of the Word; for the Word in this sense is like a man clothed, whose face and hands are bare. All that concerns man's life, and so his salvation, is ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg
... could get tea, coffee, and chocolate, a toasted roll, and the touch of cold ham which an invalid loves. And we beheld, and they were bringing up the side of the vessel trays of delicious pastry, and festoons of fowls, with more literal butcher's meat. And we said, "There will be no famine on board. Make the most of your supper, Can Grande; for it will be the last of earth to you, for some time to come." And now came silence, and tears, and last embraces; we slipped down the gangway into our little craft, and, looking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... cleaving of soul to God is expressed (ver. 1) by an image that may be connected with his circumstances at Engedi: "In Thee has my soul taken refuge." The English version is correct as regards the sense, though it obliterates the beautiful metaphor by its rendering "trusteth." The literal meaning of the verb is "to flee to a refuge," and its employment here may be due to the poetical play of the imagination, which likens his secure retreat among the everlasting hills to the safe hiding-place which his spirit found in God his habitation. A similar analogy appears ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... her father's misfortune and of calumny as regards herself—though not an absolute success, is worth a dozen Harriets, with thirteen Charlottes thrown in to make "25 as 24" in bookseller's phrase. Bage's extravagant or perhaps only too literal manners-painting (for it was an odd time) appears not infrequently, as in the anecdote of a justly enraged, though as a matter of fact mistaken, husband, who finds a young gentleman sitting on his wife's lap, with her arms round him, while he is literally and en tout bien tout ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... to fade before the chandelier, and Mrs. Marchmont, somewhat surprised at the rumpled plumage of the young ladies, and the fact that Mr. De Forrest's neck-tie was awry, suggested that they retire and prepare for supper, whereat they retreated in literal disorder. But without the door their old frenzy seized them, and they nearly ran over the dilatory Bel upon the stairs. With sallies of nonsense, smothered laughter, a breezy rustle of garments, and the rush of swift motion, they seemed to die away in the upper halls like a summer gust. To Mrs. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... together a little, we set to work to make out where we were now. I have said that there was light above, and on examination we found that it came from the sky. Our river that was, Sir Henry said, a literal realization of the wild vision of the poet {Endnote 10}, was no longer underground, but was running on its darksome way, not now through 'caverns measureless to man', but between two frightful cliffs which cannot have been ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... for the moment, no question as to how far the gospels are original, and how far they consist of Greek and Chinese interpolations. The record that Jesus said certain things is not invalidated by a demonstration that Confucius said them before him. Those who claim a literal divine paternity for him cannot be silenced by the discovery that the same claim was made for Alexander and Augustus. And I am not just now concerned with the credibility of the gospels as records ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... possible, threw himself in her way, and might have succeeded in exchanging a few words with her, as she was guarded only by the dejected Chamberlain and his halberdiers, but she seemed to have taken, in its most strict and literal acceptation, the command to be silent which she had received from the Queen; for, to the repeated signs of her grandson, she only replied by laying her finger on her lip. Dr. Lundin was not so reserved. Regret for the handsome ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... like the most perfect of religions, taken in a literal sense, is a contradictory idea. The problem is not to discover how we shall be best governed, but how we shall be most free. Liberty commensurate and identical with Order,—this is the only reality of government and ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... termed Al-Agha and quotes the proverb (No. 156) "One night the whore repented and cried:—What! no Wali (Al-Agha) to lay whores by the heels?" Some of these Egyptian by-words are most amusing and characteristic; but they require literal translation, not the timid touch of the last generation. I am preparing, for the use of my friend, Bernard Quaritch, a bona fide version which awaits only the promised volume of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... watching Sebastian, watching him quietly, with those wistful, earnest eyes, as a cat watches a mouse-hole; watching him with mute inquiry, as if she expected each moment to see him do something different from what the rest of us expected of him. Slowly I gathered that Hilda Wade, in the most literal sense, had come to Nathaniel's, as she herself expressed ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... V-shaped depression called a cove, and between two coves thus formed is a reverse [symbol: upside-down V], called a point, always, naturally, composed of the hardest rock, and not infrequently ending in a literal point so sharp that it is like a vast granite bowsprit thrust out into the green plains far below, terminating in a sheer precipice of several hundred feet. Roughly, then, you may visualize this section of the Cumberlands as a giant double-edged ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished." This prophecy was the property of all Christians, and might receive different interpretations. The literal interpretation, favoured by some theologians, was that, at some date fast approaching, Christ would reappear visibly on Earth, accompanied by the re-embodied souls of dead saints and martyrs, while the rest of the dead slept on, and that in the glorious ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... folks give up their murderous execution of the fugue-full anthem, and when will London congregations understand that the singing-psalms are not set apart exclusively for charity-children? When shall Bishop Kenn's 'Awake my soul,' cease to be our noonday exhortation; and a literal invocation for sweet sleep to close our eye-lids no longer be the ill-considered prelude to an afternoon discourse? Take some trouble to improve and educate, or get rid of, if possible, your generally ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... been wholly uninfluenced—being a woman of an alert mind—by the controversy which, in the seventies and eighties, was raging about a pretty crass and literal materialism, and her writings probably reflect—with a good deal of indirection—that controversy. Here is a possible key to a good many things which are otherwise puzzling enough. She is, in her own fashion, the defender of an idealistic interpretation ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... tri-literal word, denotes these six members of Microprosopos. For this latter is formed after the fashion of Macroprosopos, but without Kether, the will, which remains in the first prototype or Universal; though invested with a portion of the Divine Intellectual Power and Capacity. The first Universal ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... half-lengths) and translating it from the ideal into literalism, I doubt whether the unfortunate king was really a handsome or impressive-looking man: a high, thin-ridged nose, a meagre, hatchet face, and reddish hair and beard,—these are the literal facts. It is the painter's art that has thrown such pensive and shadowy grace ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this incident naturally left me were at length and suddenly dispersed, as sad thoughts not infrequently are, by a petticoat. When I say petticoat, I use the word in its literal sense, not colloquially as a metaphor for its usual wearer, meaning thereby a dainty feminine undergarment seen only by men on rainy days, and one might add washing-days. It was indeed to the fortunate accident of its being washing-day at the pretty cottage near which in the course ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... The brief literal translation of the word biology, science of life, is full explanation of its scope. A course in the subject is not Zoology, nor Botany, nor Bacteriology, nor Physiology—but rather all of these in one. Biology should logically follow the nature ...
— Adequate Preparation for the Teacher of Biological Sciences in Secondary Schools • James Daley McDonald
... One literal minded woman who had overheard Mary's remarks about lairs and new trails, and who had been on the watch for something wild all across the state of Texas, looked up in disappointment. There was nothing whatever in their ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... recent Russian proposals came as an answer to the last attempt for an understanding which the Powers believed could be arrived at honourably, and they have been rejected by the Vienna Conference, not because they were not in accordance with the literal wording of the programme, but because they were contrary to the intention of it. Your Majesty's Ambassador has taken part in this Conference and its decision, and when your Majesty now says: "The task of Diplomacy ceases at ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... unless it was the genius of Greek or Greco-Roman antiquity, supplied Michelangelo with the motive force for this prentice-piece in sculpture. Donatello and other Florentines worked under different sympathies for form, affecting angularity in their treatment of the nude, adhering to literal transcripts from the model or to conventional stylistic schemes. Michelangelo discarded these limitations, and showed himself an ardent student of reality in the service of some lofty intellectual ideal. Following and closely observing Nature, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Tom was very literal. "Say, Annie," he blurted out, "I begin to think you have had to do most of the work over there. Now, ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... either joy or sorrow, or to be conscious that he was not dining at Ancester. The General fished up a wandering eyeglass to look at him, and said:—"Quite correct!" Miss Smith-Dickenson remarked upon the dangers attendant on over-literal interpretations. The Hon. Mr. Pellew perceived in this that Miss Dickenson had a ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... may refer to this hereafter, and to show that we at least are not guilty of exaggeration, we subjoin the passage in the original Italian, from which it will be seen that our translation is as literal as possible. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... language used is symbolical, and has naught to do with sex, in any sense. Woe unto him or her who takes these allegories of the Soul as literal histories, for nothing but sorrow will follow such materialization of divine mysteries. If Simon or his followers fell into this error, they worked their own downfall, under the Great Law, as surely do all who forge such bonds of ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... Lovelace to Belford.— Receives a letter from Clarissa, written by way of allegory to induce him to forbear hunting after her. Copy of it. He takes it in a literal sense. Exults upon it. Will now hasten down to Lord M. and receive the gratulations of all his family on her returning favour. Gives an interpretation of his frightful dream to his ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... we can see. Abstract rules indeed can help; but they help the less in proportion as our intuitions are more piercing, and our vocation is the stronger for the moral life. For every real dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situation; and the exact combination of ideals realized and ideals disappointed which each decision creates is always a universe without a precedent, and for which no adequate previous rule exists. The philosopher, then, qua ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... class-room tone. He was all brown like a leaf with Valley dust and sun and rain. The old cadet cap was older yet, the ancient boots as grotesquely large, the curious lift of his hand to Heaven no less curious than it had always been. He was as awkward, as hypochondriac, as literal, as strict as ever. Moreover, there should have hung about him the cloud of disfavour and hostility raised by that icy march to Romney less than three months ago. And yet—and yet! What had happened since then? Not much, indeed. The return of the Stonewall ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... of the term burial throughout this paper is to be understood in its literal significance, the word being derived from the Teutonic Anglo-Saxon "birgan," ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... a little. It was like Harvey to be literal. He had said he was going to go round and have a good time, and he was losing no time. But in their restricted social life, where most of the men worked until five o'clock or even later, there were fewer afternoon calls paid. Belle wondered with mild sisterly curiosity ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... ABROAD, objected to him as a companion of their children in the church at home. At this juncture the Editor offered to take him into his printing office as a "devil." For a while he seemed to be endeavoring, in his old literal way, to act up to that title. He inked everything but the press. He scratched Chinese characters of an abusive import on "leads," printed them, and stuck them about the office; he put "punk" in the foreman's pipe, and had been seen to swallow small type merely as a diabolical ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... be found free from that grossness which is unavoidable in a strictly literal translation of the original into English; and which has rendered the splendid translations of Sir R. Burton and Mr. J. Payne quite unsuitable as the basis of a popular edition, though at the same time stamping the works as the two most ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... giuoca" is a phrase which refers to the system of the public lotteries, {300} established (so much to their shame) by the Italian governments; and a page of explanation of that system would be needful, to make any literal translation of it ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... was so eminently unsatisfactory that it produced a characteristic protest. "I am really distressed by the illustration of Mrs. Pipchin and Paul. It is so frightfully and wildly wide of the mark. Good heaven! in the commonest and most literal construction of the text, it is all wrong! She is described as an old lady, and Paul's 'miniature arm-chair' is mentioned more than once. He ought to be sitting in a little arm-chair down in a corner of the fireplace, staring up at her. I can't say what pain and vexation ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... introduced him to me (a me lo 'ntrodussi); but Boccaccio here uses the word introdurre in its rarer literal sense to lead, to ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... calculated to save his skin. I do not deny that Sir Thomas Picton has described him as a "thieving blackguard." But I am sure that this was merely the downright, rather extravagant manner, of censure peculiar to that distinguished general, and that those who have taken the expression at its purely literal value have been lacking at once in charity and in knowledge of the caustic, uncompromising terms of speech of General Picton whom Lord Wellington, you will remember, called ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... pleasure in the poetry itself will not be distracted by a marginal numbering of the lines; by index-figures and footnotes; or by antiquated peculiarities of spelling, capitalization, and elision. Except where literal conventions are essential to the poet's purpose,—as in The Castle of Indolence, The Schoolmistress, or Chatterton's poems,—I have followed modern usage. Dialect words are explained in the glossary; and the ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... the woman, becoming more literal as she went on, "and Marie Blanc knows it. Her husband once got the loan of it from Cloudbrow, and she looked at it with care, because she had never seen such a knife before. She knew all its marks. Why does Cloudbrow deny that it is his? Because it was Cloudbrow who killed Perrin. If ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... there been such, or so signal, a retribution. They who had taken to the sword had perished by the sword, not figuratively but in the literal meaning of the words. Stabbers by trade, they had fallen stabbed, by the hands of those whom they had destined to ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Grandchildren of the Ghetto, which is mainly a history of the middle-classes, is mainly a history of isolation. "The Upper Ten" is a literal phrase in Judah, whose aristocracy just about suffices for a synagogue quorum. Great majestic luminaries, each with its satellites, they swim serenely in the golden heavens. And the middle-classes look up in worship and the lower-classes in supplication. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Elsmere quickly—'I know; I cannot conceive it, nor could you. Imagine standing up Sunday after Sunday to say the things you do not believe,—using words as a convention which those who hear you receive as literal truth,—and trusting the maintenance of your position either to your neighbour's forbearance or to your own powers of evasion! With the ideas at present in my head, nothing would induce me to preach another Easter Day sermon to a congregation ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he received from English scholars. In itself the book was a bold defiance of theological tradition. It set aside the Latin version of the Vulgate which had secured universal acceptance in the Church. Its method of interpretation was based, not on received dogmas, but on the literal meaning of the text. Its real end was the end at which Colet had aimed in his Oxford lectures. Erasmus desired to set Christ himself in the place of the Church, to recall men from the teaching of Christian theologians to the teaching of the Founder of Christianity. The whole ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... on that of Austria. The civil code is a localized modification of the Code Napoleon. The first translation of the latter code was almost literal, and made without reference to the manners and historical antecedents of Servia: some of the blunders in it were laughable:—Hypotheque was translated as if it had been Apotheke, and made out to be a depot of drugs! When the translator was asked for the reason of this extraordinary ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... breakfast is much preferable to a dinner, not merely in the enjoyment, while it is passing, but afterwards. I made a good suggestion to Miss Hosmer for the design of a fountain,—a lady bursting into tears, water gushing from a thousand pores, in literal translation of the phrase; and to call the statue "Niobe, all Tears." I doubt whether she adopts the idea; but Bernini would have been delighted with it. I should think the gush of water might be so arranged as to form a beautiful drapery about the figure, swaying and fluttering ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it necessary that we accept the literal meaning of the passage, and conceive the Deity speaking with human voice, and calling creation forth by audible fiat. The voice of the Deity is that unheard and silent command which nature hears and obeys throughout all his works. The pious and sincere believer sees an overruling providence ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... and increase in the katobolism generally. Volubility is almost regularly increased, and is, indeed, one of the most sensitive and constant of the correlations in emotional delight.... Pleasantness is correlated in living organisms by vascular, muscular and glandular extension or expansion, both literal and figurative." (G. Dearborn, "The Emotion of Joy," Psychological Review Monograph Supplements, vol. ii, No. 5, p. 62.) All these signs of joy appear to occur at some stage of the process ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... all to pardon those imperfections, which I acknowledge to be very many, & so much the more, by reason of my long & many years continuance in foreine countries. Howbeit, I hope to have truly observed the literal sence & full effect of the history, as the author setteth it forth, which if it may please you to peruse & accept in good part, I shall be greatly emboldened to proceede & publish also the second & third booke, which I am assured will neither be vnpleasant nor vnprofitable to the readers. Thus ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... device of Beethoven to impress the main theme upon the hearer by definite repetitions on various degrees of the scale.[18] For an elaborate example of Transposition nothing can surpass the opening movement of Cesar Franck's D Minor Symphony, the entire first part of which consists of a literal repetition in F minor of what has been previously ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... remarkable attempts to recompose the Bible; Dr. Geddes's version is aridly literal, and often ludicrous by its vulgarity; as when he translates the Passover as the Skipover, and introduces Constables among the ancient Israelites; but the following attempts are of a very different kind. Sebastian Castillon—who afterwards changed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... afterwards denied to the Chilian Government that he refused, on the 4th of August, to pay the squadron. Here is the same assertion, in his own handwriting, on the 9th! During the whole of this time the squadron was in a state of literal destitution; even the provisions necessary for its subsistence being withheld from it, though the Protector had abundant means of supplying them; but his object was to starve both officers and men into desertion—so as to accelerate the dismemberment of the squadron which I would not ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... a meaning for those who reject the real descent of the species or their primordial germs one from another, and acknowledge only the ideal bond of a common plan in their successive manifestations. But as soon as we examine more closely the literal and logical meaning of the word, we shall find it of most weight when we understand by it the before-mentioned gradual evolution in opposition to the theory of progress by leaps or new creations. Moreover, ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... the American artist, painted a picture of Robert like an Italian, and then presented it to me like a prince. It is a wonderful picture, the colouring so absolutely Venetian that artists can't (for the most part) keep their temper when they look at it, and the breath of the likeness is literal.[35] Mr. Page has secrets in the art—certainly nobody else paints like him—and his nature, I must say, is equal to his genius and worthy of it. Dearest Miss Mitford, the 'Athenaeum' is always as frigid as Mont Blanc; it can't be expected to grow warmer for looking over your green ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... merely upon the language employed. The language is only symptomatic. The terminology of respiration and digestion when used in connection with religion is frankly and palpably symbolic. That of sexual love is as often frankly literal, and can be correlated with the actual state of the person using it. Digestion and respiration must go on in any case; but it is precisely the point at issue whether with a different sexual life these so-called religious ecstatic states would have ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... before I spoke again I was enabled to see clearly what duty required of me. Eva and Little Christchurch, with Jack's feelings and interests, and all my wife's longings, must be laid on one side, and my whole energy must be devoted to the literal carrying out of the law. It was a great world's movement that had been projected, and if it were to fail now, just at its commencement, when everything had been arranged for the work, when again would there be ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... common law, so in the constitution, change has been effected in substance without any corresponding change in terminology. There is hardly one of the phrases used to describe the position of the crown which can be understood in its literal sense, and many of them are currently accepted in more senses than one. The American constitution of 1789 reproduced, however, in essentials, and with necessary modifications, the contemporary British ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... subtlety. Lefevre tried to see simply what the text said, and as it became more human it became, for him, more divine. His preface is a real cry of joy at his great discovery. He did, indeed, interpret everything in a double sense, literal and spiritual, and placed the emphasis rather on the latter, but this did not prevent a genuine effort to read the words as they were written. Three years later he published in like manner the Epistles of St. Paul, with commentary. Though he spoke of the apostle as a simple ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... in the Brazilian language a word that better than any other describes the feeling with which one remembers a sojourn in Brazil. This word, saudades, is charged with an abundance of sentiment, and, though a literal translation of it is difficult to arrive at, its meaning approaches "sweet ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... our approach to Plato's Dialogues is not a matter of indifference. They will mean more or less to us, according to our spiritual condition. Much more passed from Plato to his disciples than the literal meaning of his words. The place where he taught his listeners thrilled in the atmosphere of the Mysteries. His words awoke overtones in higher regions, which vibrated with them, but these overtones needed ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... the literal verity of all the particulars of this narrative, Mr. Hunter attempts to show that it contains a substratum of fact. Edward the First, he informs us, was never in Lancashire after he became king; and if Edward the Third was ever there at all, it was not in the early years ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... without the expression of simple approval, but with the restrictive declarations which the King had at first made.[492] But besides this it was seen how little the King intended to be bound to the literal meaning of his words, for arrests without definite assignment of the reason had again taken place. The Star Chamber, which was already regarded as a court of doubtful legality, had imposed harsh and arbitrary ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... ethnic elements upon its fertile soil; that those elements in time became fused together, and that, even in the beginning, the diversities that distinguished them one from another were less marked than a literal acceptance of the tenth chapter of Genesis might lead ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... faint exasperation (it showed a little around the edges, like a green petticoat under a black dress). "Oh, these literal people!" she said, half to herself. Then she continued, still more patiently, "Isn't it just as easy to imagine sides as a bottom? Well, as I was saying, if I write them fast enough to fill it up—I mean if one should stick, of course—somebody a hundred years from now may come along and notice ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... agreed Bertram, with a promptness that carefully hid his surprise at her literal acceptance of what he had proposed as a huge joke. "Come, is it a go? Shall I telephone to see if I can ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... bull by the horns in a literal as well as figurative sense, the lad began gradually to develop into that terrible embodiment of unrest—a boy. He exhibited no very marked peculiarities up to this time to distinguish him from other youths; but just grew into the conglomerate mass of good, bad and indifferent ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... memory returned to Mrs. Procter. What was it Suzanna had once said? "Mrs. Procter cuddles all children in her heart." And Suzanna and Maizie stood watching her, asking a literal translation of a principle laid ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... hearers to an outbreak of hostilities. If either speaker had addressed the other by name, the advent of the Sergeant-at-Arms would have been the next thing looked for. On this occasion Laetitia's literal transmission of "Are you going to help the tongue or not, papa?" recalled his wandering mind to his responsibilities. Sally's liver-wing—she was the visitor—was pleading at his elbow for ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... France to the other; indeed, they are scarcely confined to any country, and, like traditions, seem to have wandered up and down into all regions. For instance, I was very much surprised, a short time ago, to see in a work on Persian popular literature, an almost literal version of a song, well-known on the Bourbonnais, which I had ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... winner. Does he only "seem to succeed?" Who does succeed, then, if he no more than seems? The vulpine intellect knows where the geese live, it is elsewhere said; but among Reineke's victims we do not remember one goose, in the literal sense of goose; and as to geese metaphorical, at least the whole visible world lies down complacently at his feet. Nor does Mr. Carlyle's expressed language on this very poem serve any better to help us—nay, it seems as if he feels uneasy in the neighbourhood of so strong a rascal, so briefly ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... with my father, because he walked faster, and talked with me while he walked, instead of being lost in his own thoughts and conversing only at intervals. A love of wandering seemed to possess him in the most literal sense; his rambles appeared to be without design, or any limit but my fatigue; and when I was "done up," he carried me home in his arms, on his shoulder, or pickback. Our communion was not always concord; as I have intimated, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... on the origin of man are contained in his Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps vivans (1802) and his Philosophie zoologique, published in 1809. We give the following literal translation in full of the views he presented in 1802, and which were probably first advanced in lectures ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... A literal prose translation of Homer, by Mr. T. A. Buckley, has just appeared in London. No prose version will cause any just notion of the spirit of Homer. Of the half dozen metrical translations published recently, we think that of our countryman Munford the best. Henry W. Herbert ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... hands furiously between his knees. It was absurd, preposterous. There was no smallest occasion to take those words in such a desperately literal sense. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... the contrary, do not injure those that go no further than the apparent meaning. Thus, for instance, they assert that there are punishments and rivers under the earth: and if we adhere to the literal meaning of these we shall not be injured. But they are deficient in this, that as their apparent signification does not injure, we often content ourselves with this, and do not explore the latent truth. We may also say that philosophic fables look to the enemies of the soul. For if we were entirely ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... anything good, will get fresh hope and heart from his story. It is well, indeed, that there have been some in whom the physical system equals the moral; men like Christopher North and Sydney Smith,—men in whom the play of the lungs was as good as the play of the imagination, and whose literal heart was as excellent as their metaphysical. We have all seen examples in which the noblest intellect and kindest disposition were happily blended with the stoutest limbs and the pleasantest face. And the sound mind in the sound body is doubtless ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... The best literal translation of the work into English thus far made is that of George Long. It is published by Little, Brown & Co. of Boston. A most admirable work, 'The Life of Marcus Aurelius,' by Paul Barron Watson, published by Harper & Brothers, New York, will repay careful reading. Other general ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... thing," I said, "as carrying honesty too far. All extremes are wrong. There are lots of occasions on which it isn't at all right to tell the literal truth." ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... not so easy to explain. It transforms this literal translation into an idiomatic one. Perhaps you will understand its workings a little later when you learn how and why I am able to ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... the Constitution should be interpreted in the light of the Declaration of Independence, so as to be the law of life to a great, powerful and free people. To this principle of interpretation, all strict or narrow criticism, founded on its literal ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... very remarkable that Titus did not people this now desolate country of Judea, but ordered it to be all sold; nor indeed is it properly peopled at this day, but lies ready for its old inhabitants the Jews, at their future restoration. See Literal Accomplishment of Prophecies, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... legend imputes to Priam and the Trojans. Pausanias, upon the same ground and by the same mode of reasoning, pronounced that the Trojan horse must have been, in point of fact, a battering-engine, because to admit the literal narrative would be to impute utter childishness to the defenders of the city. And Mr. Payne Knight rejects Helen altogether as the real cause of the Trojan war, though she may have been the pretext of it; for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... place we are reminded that he was a millennarian. The Chiliastic teaching of his work is the subject of severe comment with Eusebius, who accuses him of misinterpreting figurative sayings in the Apostolic writings and assigning to them a literal sense. This tendency appears also in the one passage which Irenaeus quotes from Papias. But the answer to this is decisive. Chiliasm is the rule, not the exception, with the Christian writers of the second ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... labelled either literary or "humanistic" studies on the other is to my mind wholly unfounded in the nature of things, and destructive of any liberal view of education. It may perhaps be held that literature in its most literal sense is a name for anything that is expressed by means of intelligible language—a use of the word which certainly admits of no comparison with the meaning of science, but which also leads to no ideas of any educational interest. ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... the translation of the Pentateuch and was continued from that time till 130 B.C. by the translation of the rest, the whole being in reality the achievement of several independent workmen, who executed their parts, some with greater some with less ability and success; it is often literal to a painful degree, and it swarms with such pronounced Hebraisms, that a pure Greek would often fail to understand it. It was the version current everywhere at the time of the planting of the Christian Church, and the numerous quotations in the New Testament from the Old are, with ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... fat, swarthy personage in the full dress uniform of a general, received us in a haughty manner, and cross-questioned us in the most minute and tedious manner. Dennis somewhat puzzled him by the style of his answers, which were anything but literal translations of what Captain Hassall said. The result, however, was favourable, and we were allowed to go wherever we chose about the city, and to get the necessary repairs of our ships executed, and to obtain all the ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... focussed every aspiration of his mind, his soul, and his body. He knew he must ask himself the inevitable question and face it without blinking. Was he appalled by her real age; could he ever get away from the indubious fact that whatever miracle science may have effected, her literal age was verging on sixty? If she were not an old woman she had been one. That beautiful body had withered, undesired of all men, that perfect face had been the battered mirror of an aged ego. He did not ask himself if ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and give de countersign," responded the literal soldier, who at such a time would have accosted a spirit of light or goblin damned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... patience to grope through the trackless intervals of time, and the skill to supply the lost words and syllables of history by careful collation with those which are spared. How faithfully this accidentally found MS. typifies such a labor, the reader may judge from the literal copy of it I now offer to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... was better grounded and had a more literal meaning than might be supposed; for the swinging gate communicated with the burial-ground, and almost directly in little Pansie's track there was a newly dug grave, ready to receive its tenant that afternoon. Pansie, however, fled ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... after this did George Muller ever resort to the lot: once at a literal parting of the ways when he was led by it to take the wrong fork of the road, and afterward in a far more important matter, but with a like result: in both cases he found he had been misled, and henceforth ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... habit of speech whatever. We accepted from them no phrase or idiom: the build and nature of the English language remained the same— unaffected by foreign manners or by foreign habits. It is true that Chaucer has the ridiculous phrase, "I n'am but dead" (for "I am quite dead"[4])— which is a literal translation of the well-known French idiom, "Je ne suis que." But, though our tongue has always been and is impervious to foreign idiom, it is probably owing to the great influx of French words which took ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... wealth. He had various corporate interests in the larger syndicates, but the basis and foundation of his fortune was real estate. His houses on the avenue were the best possible property, and his elevator row in the importers' quarter was indeed a literal gold mine. It was known that, many years before, his grandfather had died and left him the property, which, at that time, was of no great value. Young Walcott had gone out into the gold-fields and had been lost sight of and forgotten. Ten years afterwards ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... till the suit at law with the other "pretended corporation" should be terminated, and the incumbrances thereby caused removed with the vanquishment of the enemy. Those who have taken the story of the Kilkenny cats in its literal sense have done grievous injustice to the character of the grimalkins of the "faire cittie," who are really quite as demure and quietly disposed a race of tabbies as it is in the nature of any such animals ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... ancient Roman one. Some Latin writers of the twelfth century make mention of Insula Bona; and the word, Lillebonne, spelt, as it not uncommonly is, L'Ilebonne, might be regarded as originating from that appellation, of which, indeed, it is a literal translation. But the point is not worth arguing: it is equally possible, that Insula Bona may be no other than ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman |
